Let's Learn Everything!

Cryptids may be spooky, but what about the spooky animals that turned out to be... real?? And what makes a good spooky story? Could it be something secretly... heartwarming??

Timestamps:
(00:07:15) Intro
(00:04:21) Former Cryptids
(00:54:25) The Art of Spooky Stories
(01:52:33) Outro

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We also learn about: Caroline have you never met a vampire? that was from episode number Four Three, what’s spookier than having to be known, Ella met Tom the true Cryptid, the cryptid museum was research, formerly the cryptic mascot: the Okapi, komodo dragons inspired king kong, 60 iron tipped teeth (like beavers), dragon virgin birth, yes queen life finds a way, squid squads on the hunt, only photographed in 2004, 20 years ago - don’t say that, 8 fully controllable giant tentacles, “I’m learning!” as it drags you down to the bottom of the ocean, save the whales because we need them on our team for the kraken wars, you know what’s not a cryptid? western hegemony, the head of a fox and the tail of a monkey, so many names for the jackalope across the world, are jackalopes cancer??? the Jackalope and HPV vaccine are zero degress of separation away, Ella writes a sappy ending for Tom, Ella watched The Ring at 6, being retold Evangelion in an art class, a meteor made of vampires, King’s 3 kind of scary, “don’t you like to feel the shivers?”, evangelical horror, Zhiguai - accounts of the strange, a story of a beautiful harp player, creepypastas, Ella formaly apologize for her cocktober misstep, “I see you sluts out there and I don’t want to do you any disservice, two sentence horror, the artistry of Telling a scary story, maybe the real spooky story was the friends we made along the way who were dead the whole time.

Sources
Guardian: Komodo Dragons
ESA Journals: The Okapi of the Apadana
BBC: Facts About Komodo Dragons
Scientific American: Iron Tipped Teeth
New Yorker: The Squid Hunter
BBC Science Focus: Giant Squid
Wiki: Giant Squid
On the Track of Unknown Animals
The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battell
PBS: Fantastic Creatures
Evolutionary Anthropology: Discovering Gorilla
Cambridge University Press: Hanno and Gorillae
Nature: The First Description of a Kangaroo
National Geographic: The Myth of the Komodo Dragon’s Dirty Mouth
Shope OG paper
Royal Society Paper: Shope Papilloma Virus
The Scientist: On the Trail of the Jackalope
---
NYTimes Story on Exxon and Climate Change
A History of Horror
Timothy Beal Paper on Evangelical Horror
Pliny The Elder's Ghost Story
Liu Ming Ming on Zhiguai
The Story of Liang
Gan Bao In Search of the Supernatural
Retelling Urban Legends Study
SCP Antimemetics Division
JSTOR Daily on Alvin Schwartz's Process
CRR Library on Alvin Schwartz Language Arts Interview

For our birthday this year, we've each gifted a topic for one another! For Caroline, an environmental hot take: can invasive species ever be... good? For Tom, an entire topic about one of his favorite hobbies: rock climbing! And for Ella, interviews from the Ig Nobel Laureates this year.

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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:09:04) Good Invasive Species
(00:46:31) Rock Climbing
(01:18:05) Ig Nobel Interviews
(02:01:14) Outro

We also learn about: In podcast years we’re 60, Ella’s party hat, what’s your favorite color and least favorite invasive species, it’s my birthday also, the zebra mussel, Humanity: “Hubris et Brevi Perspicacia”, canetoads that can’t even reach the beatles, maybe Ella is biased being part of the largest invasive species: the brits, not all non-native species are invasive, the neutral long island wall lizards, should I stan or cancel the grass? you can’t get rid of the nonnative birds in hawaii without killing the native plants, knowing beneficial non-native species helps us triage the real problems, Caroline’s thesis was on this??? a traditional LLE answer: It’s Complicated, Tom simply screams, duck roll, GTA IV Trailer, songs when he was born, but how does this involve scientology? what makes us human, Live from the Ig Nobels, “Don’t Die”, sometimes you need to remember to breathe, “I mostly just watch clips on Lateral”, Blue Zones, Dr Saul Newman’s Poem, Skinner’s pigeon guided missiles somehow missed Ella, minority report for pigeons, “I’m from New York Most of the Times”, vortex energy capture, The Water Swims the Fish took years, a long winded way to say just keep swimming, the silly in the science, Tom rips up Caroline’s gift.

Sources:
Canal & River Trust: Zebra Mussles
National Museum Australia Cane Toads in Australia
Wikipedia: Beavers in Patagonia
Scientific American: Hawaiian Birds
The Conversation: Some ‘invasive species’ can help native ecosystems thrive.
The Hawaii VINE project
Hofstra University: Italian Wall Lizards
Trends in Ecology and Evolution: Valuing the contributions of non-native species to people and nature
Brown University Press Release
Brown Daily Herald: Rebuttal
---
Rock Climbing sources coming soon!
---
Ig Nobel Ceremony 2024
Max Planck Institue on Blue Zones
UCL on Saul Newman's Work
Pre-print of Saul Newman's Paper
Smithsonian Mag on the Pigeon Project
NIH on Operant Conditioning
APA Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century Survey
Julie Vargas Queens University Belfast Interview
Jimmy Liao's Dead Trout Paper

What's actually going on in the center of the Earth, and just how interesting and useful could it be?  And how did the now ubiquitous Planned Obsolescence start with... bicycles??

Images we Talk About:
An Early Bicycle
Bilhert's Animations

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:05:06) The Core
(00:58:24) Planned Obsolescence
(01:45:52) Outro

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We also learn about: Core Memories, we live on the zest of a lemon, there’s something neapolitan icecreamy about the Earth, Bridgmanite is 38% of the Earth, The Iron Catastrophe sounds metal as hell, an audio journey to the center of the Earth, “Eat My Ass Out Radiolab”, Earth’s Internal Heat Budget is half original energy and half nuclear, the Earth won’t cool down for at least another 10 years,  the American Miscellaneous Society’s Project Mohole, in 20 years we dug 12 km and escaped the solar system, when you don’t have earthquakes- use grenades! the shadow in the center of the Earth, Inge Lehmann kicks ass, “the master of a black art”, the inner core wobbles, the core is grainy and grows faster under Indonesia, the 2 most magical things: cold beer and hand warmers, the Inner Core Nucleation Paradox, “how wonderful that we have been met with a paradox, now we have some hope of making progress” - Niels Bohr, the Earth’s magnetic dynamo, Planetary Habitability is uh pretty important, everyone say thank you to the core, the innermost inner core, sometimes the one you’re looking for has been right below you this whole time, Tom falls hook line and sinker for a sudden 175 page bicycle paper, the first bikes without pedals or steering, the boneshaker, older men used tricycles, only the rich and adventurous used bikes, the safety iphone, you’re still using a bike 8? 10% of ads had a bicycle, Bernard London coined phrase the phrase 100 years ago, Planned Obsolescence was a legal proposal, contrived durability, there’s so many flavors and they all suck, e-waste, fast fashion is a vicious cycle, please I’m so full no more obsolescence words, car scrapping, why can we only help the planet when we also make a ton of money too, I’ve never seen someone so excited over Right to Repair, what do you mean you didn’t check every country’’s legal system? 

Source
SEG Wiki on the Layers of the Earth
Forbes: Bridgmanite
“Six ‘Must-Have’ Minerals for Life’s Emergence”
Olsen Lecture on the Iron Catastrophe
Bureaeu of Economic Geology on Mohole & Kola
Science Article on Bridgmanite
Britannica on Richard Dixon Oldham
AMNH's Wonderful Article on Inge Lehmann & Earthquakes
Don Anderson Paper Review of the Inner Core
Smithsonian Mag on Inge Lehmann
Excellent Review from Harvard on Lehmann's Groundbreaking Paper
Geological Society of America on Super Rotation
Scientific American on Core Slowing
Space on Core Growth
University of Leeds on the Inner Core Nucleation Paradox
Scientific American on Core Paradox
2023 Paper on the Innermost Inner Core
---
Science Direct: Planned Obsolescence
1984 Paper: An Economic Theory of Planned Obsolescence
1998 Paper: The Most Benevolent Machine: A Historical Assessment of Cycles in Canada
2023: A Deep Dive Into Addressing Obsolescence in Product Design: A Review
IndieAuto: 1960's VW Ad
PERC: Planned Obsolescence: The Good and the Bad
BBC: How The Right to Repair Might Change Technology
The Guardian: Planned Obsolescence: The Outrage of Our Electronic Waste Mountain
CBS News: Apple is Sending Out Payments to iPhone Owners iImpacted by "Batterygate." Here's what they are getting.
The Evening Standard: Apple Battery Lawsuit
Iberdrola: Planned obsolescence
UNITAR: Global e-Waste Monitor 2024
BBC: E-waste: Five Billion Phones to be Thrown Away in 2022
European Parliament: The Impact of Textile Production and Waste on the Environment (Infographics)
The Atlantic: The Neurological Pleasures of Fast Fashion
Britannica: Fast Fashion
Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Fashion and the Circular Economy
WRAP: 2022 Press Release
WRAO: 2022 Report
NatGeo: Fast Fashion Goes to Die in the World's Largest Fog Desert.
UK Parliament: Vehicle scrappage schemes
Cars Lost Forever In The 2009 Scrappage Scheme
BBC: 2030 petrol ban
2019 Paper: Consumer Responses to Planned Obsolescence
Right to Repair EU
European Parliament: Right to Repair
BHS: Sewing Skills

Longtime inspiration and friend of the show Hank Green joins us for a very special episode!  How do colonial organisms with just one queen avoid incest? How many Ig Nobels have gone to sex science? Can the team figure out the identity of the Reverse Platypus? When was the first dick grafitti, and could the story actually be... wholesome???

Watch: The video of the unexpected moment

Images we talk about:
MRI of Sex
Rat Pants Diagram
The Phallodeum Image
Venus of Hohle Fels
The Debatable Dick
Hadrian's Wall Dick Graffiti
Vindolanda's SECVNDINVS Dick
The Vindolanda Dick
Nikasitimos's Dick

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:40) How Not to Colonial Incest
(00:20:52) Ig Nobel Sex Studies
(00:39:07) The Reverse Platypus
(01:06:31) The First Dick Graffiti
(01:33:10) Hank Questions
(01:53:44) Outro

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We also learn about:

Emmy award winning standup comedian Hank Green, the fellowship of the ning, the literal birds and the bees, the icelandic ant geneology app, icelandians are my favorite colonial organism, breeding flight, slay queen - happy pride everyone it’s when we’re recording this, sperm storage, queens have a life's worth of sperm and eggs inside them, Spermathica that’s my word of the day, the termite queen stores the sperm inside a king, “he’s not my boyfriend he’s my sperm storage unit”, naked mole rats may do incest but they dont have cancer! the answer is “all of the strategies somewhere”, after all reproduction is The Thing in evolution, the ribbed condom won all the prizes that year, any topic can be a sex topic if you try hard enough, I think the ancient greeks proved a gay bomb would make them more powerful, MRI Porn is a new fetish, we should study sex more, sex makes you want to pee, whatever you’re doing pee right now, The Sex Live of Pantsed Rats, would rats be sexier if they wore pants like this or this, our google history is fucked, polyester testicle sling contraception, The Awesome Polyester Scrotum Cup Club, if you’re creative they’re all sex numbers, shark live birth is metal, teamwork - what is this the lateral podcast? Jules Howard presents Duck Vagina VR, “if it’s Caecilians I’m going to be so mad”, Bizarre Beasts gave Tom a heart attack, the Reproduction DLC, Caroline falls in love with Caecilians, “they come in blue!”, all that matters is How Do They Bone! lots of non mammals give live births sharks to snakes to aphids,  phallodeum: penis day! “we had to make a whole new peen word!”, phallodeum photo watermark, I haven’t looked at every caecilian penis okay! “can you make it into cheeeese thoooough”, we’ve invented a new fetish and a new delicacy, Caecillians and Sicillians have a lot in common, why are not talking about this more! “it’s not surprisingly, maybe I’m just very smart!”, 40,000 year old genital sculptures, Venus Hohle Fels, the debated dick, ah the conclusive slit! “it’s like looking for a face in a cloud”, the penis test is whether it would be confiscated in school, penis art vs penis graffiti, how many penises on Hadrian’s wall, almost one dick per mile, time to penis, “are you ready for your next penis”, Secundinus deez nuts, when Nick and Tim have sex so good they carve about it on a wall, “little special moments all over the world”, Pompeii sex graffiti, eventually this will be historic! we bully Hank into following Caroline, competing on TikTok is hard and also it’s broken, Hank derails us with a mouth coil, Hank’s science journey, counting clams for the science fair, people like seeing real science, Thanks Hank!

Sources:
List of Ig Nobel Prizes
MRI Genitals Study
Vice: MRI Sex Study
Rats Having Sex in Little Outfits Study
The Rat Study but Humans
Sex Improves Breathing Study
---
NatGeo Caecilian Overview
Textbook Caecilian Overview
Excellent Caecilian Reproduction Review
Extensive Paper on the Phalodeum
Various Non-mammal Milks
The Recent Study on Caecilian Milk
NYTimes Interview on Caecilian Milk
---
2009 Paper: A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany
Smithsonian Magazine: The Cave Art Debate
New Atlas: Scientists Clash Over World's Oldest Penis Carving
2023 Paper- Symbolic innovation at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia shown by the personal ornaments from Tolbor-21 (Mongolia)
IFL Science: Ancient Roman Penis Graffiti Shows Humans Will Never Change
BBC News: Lewd Roman Insult Found on Stone Near Hadrian's Wall
The Guardian: 2,500-Year-Old Erotic Graffiti Found in Unlikely Setting on Aegean Island

It's an infamous pseudoscience, but what haven't we learned from the rise and fall of Phrenology? And Lego are ubiquitous, which means there's a lot to learn and a lot of nuance for our love of these stackable bricks.

Things we Talk About:
The Phrenology Pamphelet
The Lego Cullen House
Lego Seismometer
CERN Lego Device
The Brick Experiment Channel

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:32) Phrenology
(00:56:34) Lego
(01:38:25) Outro

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We also learn about: Get the lego phrenology set now! just listing all the lego sets, academic racism, the head wasn’t always so important, the Cardiocentric Hypothesis, Minds Behind the Brain, ancient egyptians just tossed the brain, Aristotle thought the brain was a radiator to keep the heart from overheating, the brain doesn't Look like it does anything, Galen suggested the brain might be important actually, sperm for brains, Caroline enjoys tricking us by saying a person’s good ideas first, Cephelocentric Hypothesis, mapping the brain in the 1600s, NOT related to the frenulum, buzz feed phrenology quizzes, flexing your brain so hard it breaks your skull, Tom is proven to be not funny, our desire for personality tests and fortune telling, travelling phrenology salesmen, there shouldn’t be medical celebrities, phrenology was a passion of the elites, reading an actualy travelling phrenology sheet, “differently bumped”, edibnugrh fringe was a lot less fun when it was the phrenology capital, we checked and it’s actually mozambique have the best brains - just gotta take the L on this one, Marie Jean Pierre Flourens kicked ass and helped kill Phrenology with real science, it comes in like a fad and leaves like a fad, I only liked phrenology before it was cool, the scammers are making our racism look bad! we’re not harsh enough about phrenology, “repoliticizing” phrenology, when it’s built its just one thing but when its pieces it can be anything, shirtless lego jacob, 20,000 lego sets, Play Well - Le go, after enough fires lets just stop using wood, stud and tube design, the lego To Kill a Mockingbird set, mindstorm was ahead of its time, Caroline’s got their lego driver’s license from legoland, lego nerd culture, adults without kids spend more, “transbranding”, Ella had to read so much corporate jargon but it’s impossible to not talk about their business strategies , lego seismograph outside the eras tour, CERN lego, their story is better than ours dad, instructions for a lego skin cell printer, LEGO: expensive for toys - cheap for science equipment! David Aguilla’s prosthetic project, Tracey Williams’ Lego Lost at Sea project, plastic’s resilience is a positive and a negative, lego replay and reuse, this is a trust test of nuance and both things being true at the same time.

Sources:
Minds Behind the Brain: A History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries by Stanley Finger
The University of Queensland: Understanding the Brain: A Brief hHistory
Brain Beats Heart: A Cross-Cultural Reflection
Merriam Webster: Phrenology
The Antlantic: The Shape of Your Head and the Shape of Your Mind
Britannica: Phrenology
Smithsonian Insider: Study Finds Facial Structure of Men and Women Has Become More Similar Over Time
2005 Paper: The Reliability of Sex Determination of Skeletons From Forensic Context in the Balkans
The Guardian: Archaeology’s Sexual Revolution
2018 Paper: An Empirical, 21st Century Evaluation of Phrenology
Carnegie Mellon University: Phrenology
2021 Paper: Phrenology and the Average Person, 1840–1940
The University of Edinburgh: Phrenology and Edinburgh
Gina Rippon: When Bigger Isn’t Always Better: How History Got The Female Brain Wrong
Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill on Sexual Equality
The Guardian: Django Unchained and the racist science of phrenology
2007 Paper: Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (1794–1867): An Extraordinary Scientist of His Time
---
Lego Twilight Cullen House
Brick Architect: Number of Lego Bricks
Brickset: Number of Lego Sets
Brick Economy Most Valuable
Brick Economy Most Expensive
Wikipedia: Legoland
Lego History Chapter by Lars Konzack
Lego Mindstorms Wikipedia
What is Transmedia? Article
Lego and Transmedia Research
Lego And “Transbranding” Blogpost
Lego Seismometer Kit
Lego Seismometer Youtube Clip
Guardian Article: David Aguilar Lego Prostheses
Hand Solo Youtube Channel
Lego Table From CERN
Article on Other Lego Scientific Tools!
Cardiff University: Lego Bioprinter
Lego 3D Printer Paper
Lego Inventions Video (Pancake Flipper and Super 8 Projector)
Lego T-Rex Sculpture
Lego Every Day Stuff Ideas
Lego Lost at Sea Twitter
Lego Shark Tweet
Tracey Williams Book: Adrift: Lego Lost at Sea
Tokio Express Crash Context Article
Tracey Williams: Lego at Sea Paper
Statista Lego CO2 Emissions
Lego: 99% Outside Emissions
Lego Replay Initiative
BBC: Lego from Recycled Plastic 2018
Wired: Lego from Recycled Plastic 2024

While we're sending Tom "Well Wissage" and a speedy recovery, enjoy Ella & Caroline on this tremendous episode of one of our sibling shows on the network, Secretly Incredibly Fascinating!

You may have heard Epigenetics used as a buzzword, but what is it really? Is it something we know about, something still new, or... both? And what in the world are the World Games, and what makes them better than the Olympics?

Links we Talk About:
Ella's SciShow Video on X Chromosome Diseases
Sport Casting
Fin Swimming
Haudenosaunee Flag
Christopher Root's Incredible Paper on the Colonization of Lacrosse
The Adorable NYMuseum Haudenosaunee Video

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:21) Epigenetics
(00:57:40) The World Games
(01:50:54) Outro

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We also learn about: Ella passes her driving exam Tom’s not bitter about John Oliver, what is y’alls familialarity, epi- meaning on top of, epigentics are like tabs or blacked out text in the book of your DNA, epigentics stop your brain from turning into bone, oh did other people help Rosalind Franklin with the double helix? bases and double helixes and histones, literally blocking DNA from being read, epigentics are less cyberpunk and more exercise is good for you, epigentics is why you go blind from masturbating, it’s simpler in animals, “I’ve been here the whole time!”, “you’re enough Tom”, 2 X chromosomes means you have an extra, X Inactivation, Calico Cats are Genetic Mosaics, your epigentic markers are like your browsing cookies: you clear them before giving them to someone, are pollinators plant cucks? Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance, is it nature or nurture? generational trauma doesn’t have to be epigenetic to be real, inherited cherry blossom mouse sensitivity, the effects are subtle, Ella might have a high epigenetic age from her rock and roll lifestyle, this is so new there’s so much we don’t know, the epigenetic advice: healthy diet and exercise, how different could the world games be? casting for sport, wait did you hear me say break dancing is this a bit, the worst SEO for a name ever, Rugby 7s started at the World Games, the World Games are as old as Beyoncé, let’s do our own thing we’ll definitely be more popular than the olympics, tried at the hague? we sure did! at the least the World Games are being honest about it being a bumpy ride, the “Memorandum of Understanding” reads like a parenting agreement, grouping by sport not nation, the curse of hosting the olympics, reviving forgotten sports like Tug of War, wait who was first?? guys come on have some respect for yourself! breaking records with fins, shark skin suits aren’t biomimicry, tech doping, fin swimming and barebow archery, murderball is an official world game sport, the NYTimes officially called lacrosse “frat boy” sport, mile long hundred person lacrosse, of course sports are spiritually healing, colonizing lacrosse,  Haudenosaunee - the people of the long house, Tom cut it with the sad voice tell us what happened, “we wouldn’t be here without their medicine game… they need to be there”,  we’ll have to see if the olympics accept the Haudenosaunee, if your games are as old as beyonce you dont have to worry about breaking tradition, “nothing is silly, everything should be respected and held up”, Ella goes OFF and takes over the topic.

Sources:
Chromosome Structure
Aboud et al. What Is Epigenetics?
Nature: Types of Epigenetic Modifications
Study on Exercise and Epigenetics
Nature: Diet and Epigenetics
Macdonald: Epigenetic Imprinting
Nature: When Imprinting goes wrong
Basta & Pandya: The Beautiful X Chromosome
Getting the Right Amount of X
Review on X Inactivation
Calico Cat X Chromosome Inctivation
PBS: Lamarckian Evolution
Cell: Transgeneration Epigenetic Inheritence
How Epigenetics are Wiped Clean
Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance Prisoners of War Study
TEI Dutch Famine Study
TEI Study Children of Holocaust Survivers
TEI Cherry Blossom Mice Study
Epigenetic Clock Review
---
Casting Federation Records
World Games Website: About
1993 World Games at The Hague
The Olympic "Memorandum of Understanding"
Reporting on the First World Games
World Games President Interview about Wheelchair Rugby
NYTimes on Indigenous Lacrosse
Onondaga Nation on Lacrosse
Chocktaw Nation on Lacrosse
Christopher Root's Incredible Paper on the Colonization of Lacrosse
Haudenosaunee History
NPR on Haudenosaunee Players at the Olympics

It's a word we say all the time but... what IS a species? How has it been used in the past, and could the different answers all be right?  And how does voting work in the UK?  It starts with voting for knights, and could hopefully end in the future with something even better.

Images we Talk About:
Ella's Zoom Moustache

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:23) What is a Species?
(01:01:54) UK Voting
(01:50:46) Outro

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We also learn about: Jenny Lec, the definition we know is wrong, has anyone taken my title On The Origin of Species? This is my favorite! Oh shit…  generic and specific, thinking of species as logical units, Kingdom Phylum Friends Acquaintances Work Friends Genus Species, the anime dewey decimal system, dark fungi, the cognitive dissonance of science at the time, even Darwin didn’t have a good definition of species, 1942 is when the common species definition was popularized, Biological - Evolutionary - Genetic definition of species, species gerrymandering, there is only 1 species of giraffe but should there be 4? policy first science, you don’t need hard definitions to do amazing things, nature is constantly doing kickflips over our no skateboarding signs, you really put your whole polizzy into naming that hybrid, a ring of banging around the himalayans, ring species in actuality look like a biblically accurate angel, let’s just ask what definitions scientists use, you can’t tell if fossils ever fucked, we only knew about human neandrethal interbreeding since 2010, what’s so wrong with having multiple species definitions? there’s a lot to biology! in between “there’s one answer” and “there’s no answers” is “there’s many answers”, Lizzy Poll, you can just call an election early?? in the UK you just vote for your member of parliament, it’s actually really weird to have a separate vote for president, every 2 steps forward is brought 1 step back by “the monster raving loony party”, Elmo think women no need to vote, the house senate and president, coalitions, tea cups with electoral college members on them, electing knights in the first parliament in 1264, bloc voting lets you pick your top favorites, Cromwell was the first Footloose, we had discovered quantum physics before women could vote, First Past the Post was only establish in 1948 in the UK, what are the positives of First Past the Post and cockroaches? please let us loose to bash FPTP, tactical voting, Australia has a version of Ranked Choice, Tom finally gets to wax poetic about Ranked Choice Voting, france’s 2 round voting, if the definition of species should match the task why not the type of voting system? the 2011 voting reform attempt, it’s been the foundation of this country for generation, try ranked choice voting on smaller scales and locally, Ella falls in love with herself, happy hour gender confusion

Sources
Carl Zimmer for NYT "What is a Species Really?"
Aristotle's Use of Species and Genus
Queiroz on Ernst Mayer and Species Definitions
Montana State on Linneus and Species Definitions
Dark Fungi
Ernst Mayer's Modern Excellent "Systematics And The Origin Of Species"
Paper Debating Darwin's Definition of Species
Bird Interbreeding
Scientific American on Wolf Species
The Greenish Warbler Broken Ring Species
Stankowski and Ravinet's Amazing "Quantifying the use of Species Concepts"
NHM "Are Neandrethals the Same Species as Us"
---
Sky News: General Election Explained
UK Parliament: Voting Systems in the UK
Electoral Reform Party: How Long Have We Used First Past the Post?
2019 Paper: Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform in Historical Perspective by David Klemperer
Parliament UK: Magna Carta
PDF: UK Parliament and the Monarchy
UK Parliament: Women get the Vote
BBC: Voting System in the UK
UK Parliament: Proportional Representation
The Guardian: ‘Disproportionate’ UK Election Results Boost Calls to Ditch First Past the Post
The Conversation: The Conservatives May Regret Campaigning to Keep First Past the Post in 2011

After much deliberation, the academy (listeners of the podcast) has voted on the best topics from the past year! If this is your first episode, you'll get a sampling of our favorite moments of science and sillyness, and if you're a long time listener, you'll hear some behind the scenes thoughts about the topics, as well as... a secret teaser at the very end??

Images we Talk About:
The Jacobin Pigeon
The Pouter Pigeon

Timestamps:
(00:04:37) Intro
(00:03:59) Part 1
(00:55:00) Part 2
(01:51:28) Outro

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We also learn about: you gotta listen to the best ofs for the rock paper scissors drama, I’m not sure if Ella remembers our names, it’s not the same joke it’s a Call Back, superseding my superseded theories, Tom’s jokes are like the rain - you walk on through and hope it stops quickly, it gets Jalapeno business, I miss Comedy, Ella claimed review corner but keeps forgetting it, the art of topic writing is explaining but also what not to explain, our favorite topics of each others, wrote down the idea for public domain day the year before, Tom goofs up the La La Land Joke, ohh did you just finish episode 50? maybe, thanks everyone for the nice messages, Mum! “those stupid awards”, they’re all great episodes, we learned who in our family listens to our show, you guys wanna learn about ants??

What happens when a star collapses to a point of near infinite gravity? And just how hard could that be to actually... find? And why do we love tattoos so much, and how long have human beings across the world been loving them too?

Check out Tom's first long form video that's finally out!
Images we Talk About:
The Crab Nebula
First Image of a Black Hole
Photo of OUR Black Hole, Sagiratius A
Ancient Siberian Tattoo

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:47) Black Holes 101
(00:57:51) Tattoos
(01:43:53) Outro

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We also learn about: black holes are massive (mass) but not massive (size), nothing can escape a black hole, supermassive black hole by muse, the closest black hole is 1000 light years away so we don’t need to worry about them too much, matter can’t escape the Plunging Region, does your McDonald also have black holes? stellar evolution, “they’re just big gassy balls doing nuclear fusion”, the fusion in a star pushes against the gravity keeping it in equilibrium, Caroline’s fear of the sun expanding, stellar corpse, a neutron star is just made of neutrons - that can’t be right, if you add too much flour (mass) this will turn into an atomic bomb (black hole), stop saying massive and start saying voluptuous to avoid confusion, one in every thousand stars could be a blac khole, “surely that’s not sustainable” “have I got news for you about the future of all things”, theorizing a black hole in 1783, we only get the word Black Hole in 1964, betting on Signus X1, finding black holes by nearby objects’ bright hot death screams, it took 2 years to process the black hole image, sorry I think it looks like a butthole, Sagitarius A - our galaxies butthole, deslicious spaghettification, we’re all being spaghettified, I’m being raviolified here! where do you go in a black hole? into a topic for another day, “tom saw the topic on me”, no inheritance until you tattoo me onto your butt, Caroline got a tattoo to honor pigeons, the above skin - the skin - and the below skin, phagocytosis, microphages contain and become the tattoo! “the art is your immune system” and we only knew this in 2018, Ötzi the Iceman had 57 tattoos, ella regrets letting us guess what tattoos he had, ritualistic and therapeutic tattoos, egyptian women tattoos, old preserved siberian tattoo, the painted picts, Tattoo comes from the Tahitian word Tatau, famed tattoo afficianado Charles Darwin, the meaning of polynesian tattoos, sailor tattoos were inspired by polynesians but adapted to things meaningful to them, sailor tattoos were like sailing achievements, shark repeller tattoos, ancient greek tattoos were literally “skin-stigmas”, stigma affects culture and culture affects stigma in a feedback loop, “true on all accounts for my case”, gender norms in tattoos,  “ooh another means by which to put down women don’t mind if I do”, biases in the workplace,”it’s literally only skindeep”, tattoos are so personal and human of course you can’t assume or speak to all of them, they’re an art and they’re universal across cultures.

Sources:

NASA: Black Holes
Science News Explores: What are black holes?
Gravitational Collapse Overview
Goddard Space Flight Centre: The Life Cycles of Stars: How Supernovae Are Formed
Britannica: End States of Stars
Britannica: Evolution of High Mass Stars
Britannica: Origin of Chemical Elements
BBC Bitesize: The Lifecycle of Stars (GCSE Resource)
NASA: Neutron Stars Are Weird
Science News Explores: A Short History of Black Holes
Astronomy: A Brief History of Black Holes
Lind Hall Library: John Michell
American Museum of Natural History: The Country Parson Who Conceived of Black Holes
University of Chicago: Black Holes Explained
Astronomy: Cygnus X-1- The Black Hole that Started it All
Event Horizon Telescope: Astronomers Reveal First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy
1978 Article: A Supermassive Object in Galaxy M87
Space.Com: Where do Black Holes Lead To?
SYFY: How Worried Should We Be About Black Holes?
Podcast: The Guardians Science Weekly- White Holes
Image Source: NASA First Image of a Black Hole
Image Source: Event Horizon Telescope: FIrst Image of Black Hole at the Centre of the Milyway
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Pew Research: How Many People Have Tattoos?
The Science of Tattoos
Mouse Tail Tattoo Study
Wellcome Collection: A Brief History of Tattoos
Smithsonian: More History
Japan’s Tattooing History
Maori Tattoos
Polynesian tattoos
Pazyryk Tattoos (Very Cool)
First Female MP to Wear Moko
Sailor Tattoos
Broussard & Harton's Amazing Tattoo Stigma Study